FREE DVD Burner Program For ALL Files!

[dirtybuck]

Does anyone know of such a program? I've downloaded a few, but wind up deleting them since they won't do all files, including mp4's. They will only do files with some very odd extensions. Also, though some are listed as "free download" they generally have a tendency to expire within 15-30 days.

 

[panthera]

3 Questions

Are you trying to write a DVD to play in conventional DVD players using Divx or xvid or .mov files?
Or, are you trying to write data disks?
Which operating system are you using - Vista/7/MacOS?

There are genuinely free programs to do just about anything, including DVD authoring, some good ones built into Windows, even.

 

[dirtybuck]

First one, but instead want to use mp4. XP here.

 

[dirtybuck]

I was told if I wanted to make a movie of my own with one of the video editing programs, in order for it to play in a common DVD player, it should be saved in MPEG4 (MP4) format.

 

[jeffg]

I was told if I wanted to make a movie of my own with one of the video editing programs, in order for it to play in a common DVD player, it should be saved in MPEG4 (MP4) format.

Bill, that's more untrue than true. MP4 hasn't been around that long, and only DVD players made in the last few years will know what to do with those files.

Almost all players recognize both MPG (the older MPEG3) and VOB (MPEG3 files with optional encryption/copy protection), so that should be your target format. If you don't need to add fancy DVD features like menus and titles, you can just create "data" DVDs and copy the MPG files directly to the blank discs, and most players will still see and play these files. A great program for doing this is DeepBurner, I use the freeware version 1.9:

DeepBurner - Powerful CD and DVD Burning Package

If you want to add menus, titles and other fancy stuff, you'll need a program to create "video" DVDs. Freeware options here are more limited, but I use a nifty program called DVD Flick (see link). It even will take FLV files downloaded from YouTube and elsewhere, combine them if necessary and create standard MPEG3 video DVDs:

DVD Flick

www.dvdflick.net

 

[panthera]

What JeffG said

is absolutely right.

DVDFlick is probably your best free bet.

Before you invest the time in learning to use it, try something:

Change the file name of an mp4 film to "avi" then burn the movie to a DVD as:

Movie.avi

Do the same with:

Movie.dixv

You'd be surprised how many DVD players can play one of those without difficulty.

 

[jasonl]

Wow

I didn't think you could burn DVD-Video for free. The codec isn't free. I'll have to check that program out.

 

[dirtybuck]

OK!

I thank you all for the comments and understand what you're saying, and will probably download one of the programs mentioned.

HOWEVER...won't something with an .avi extension take up more room on a DVD over an MP4, as MP4's are more compressed?

(DeepBurner was one of the programs I tried to use, and got the "funny" extension file names).

 

[jeffg]

AVI is just a file format, it doesn't refer to a specific codec. A given AVI file can either be uncompressed (which accounts for some of them being huge), or compressed by one of hundreds of different codecs.

I hope you understand what I'm trying to explain. A file with an MP4 extension means it was encoded with an MPEG4 codec, MPG files were encoded with an MPEG3 (or MPEG2) codec, etc. But a file with an AVI extension doesn't tell you anything about what codec was used to compress it, or even whether it's compressed at all.

 

[panthera]

Jason

Vista and 7 have the codec on-board.
There is also a legal codec which just happens to 4C out to the same, imagine that...although it is free.

The .avi extension refers to a container, not the codec, as Jeff explained...it is weird, but many DVD players only check the *.ending to decide if they can try the file or not! That's why I suggested you try both .avi and .divx, even though they don't change the file itself.

VOB files (DVD) are based on the Mpeg2 standard, AFAIK